“I am not scared of mistakes anymore. I look forward to them.” From her previous exhibition titled “Name, Place, Animal, Thing” to her recent solo show at Rohtas titled “Of Marks, Moments and Mistakes”, her work has evolved keeping its delightfully simple and spontaneous language intact. She uses a vivid colour palette, each colour “uncooked“ as she puts it, letting the paint be paint, letting the colours behave like themselves, each retaining its flavour - sweet, bitter or savory. Cy Twombly describes this language in a beautiful way:
“It’s instinctive in a certain kind of painting...It’s like a nervous system. It’s not described, its happening. The feeling is going on with the task. The line is the feeling, from a soft thing, a dreamy thing, to something hard, something arid, something lonely, something ending, something beginning.”
One of Jalil's works displayed recently at the Rohtas Gallery, Lahore
Rabeya Jalil uses her pictorial surfaces like the pages of a personal journal
Rabeya Jalil uses her pictorial surfaces like the pages of a personal journal, where she paints or takes notes of her experiences from everyday life: confessions, accounts of mistakes and a spectrum of emotions. She wonders and she paints honestly and with wholehearted childlike exuberance. The surfaces seem undone and spontaneous but strongly articulated. Her depiction of spaces is not perspectival but perceptual, honouring the art of mark-making and savouring the mistakes. The mark stands as a symbol for all things small, brief and beautiful like pebbles on the roads, chipped paint from the walls of the city, the fluttering bright clothes of a little girl dressed up by her mother for some occasion whizzing excitedly along on a bicycle, little punched holes and parallel lines on the notebook of a child, waiting for his scribbles and scrawls. How the eye slides along the letters, the bumpy ride on the sheen ke shoshay and jeem-chay hooks and then the joyous jump up the curves and loops of these letters.
The artist is simultaneously doing a lot of things on her canvasses; she acts as a critic of society, a witness and the historian of the time we live in and a celebrator of the value of the mundane and seemingly ordinary.
It reinforces one’s belief that art has a magical capacity to re-sensitise, and the remarkable ability to awaken us to the cornucopia of everyday life and experiences. Art like Rabeya Jalil’s creates pathways to connect to ourselves and the world around us. It is “the yellow brick road “on the map of the collective conscious of all humans, alive or long gone. It is like the stars in Van Gogh’s starry night, each star a different destination, but connected through a vast Prussian blue fluid matter.
The work delivers infusions of clarity and ambiguity simultaneously, using an honest and elementary language and childlike symbolism which questions our deeply rooted self defense mechanism – which in turn is a product of years of conditioning and regurgitation of the responses and behavior that has been fed to us by society. There is, after all, a certain immunity that has been germinating in our social consciousness, which readily dismisses anything sincere or true, simplistic or naive . It is important to understand that this genre of artistic language requires rigorous intellectual exercise. It can either come directly from a child’s unadulterated, unbridled and untainted way of seeing and expressing , or it has to be acquired through years of experience , sharpened observation , learning the art of being vulnerable and flipping this vulnerability into strength .
'Export Quality'
It requires the artist to develop the ability to weightlessly levitate between the realms of learning and unlearning, for after all, unlearning is a growth mindset which should be the key purpose of education.
Looking at Rabeya Jalil’s extensive background in art education and her seamless evolution of art practice, we can trace back her trail of ideas and muses.
Her work is multilayered and has activist and political undertones. “Everyone ought to be political!” she insists. It is not just about attaining a position in which one tries to let go of inhibitions or reaching the level of raw spontaneity. It is more than just making sense of the chaotic world around us. It is not only a sensitive and heartfelt response of an artist. In fact, it calls for some action. It connects with the “common man “, remaining all the while provocative, engaging and unapologetic.
According to Jalil, the artist needs to be able to be able to do more than just mirror the inner and outer world. The artist needs to acquire a new position, take responsibility and use their gifts for the benefit of the community they live in. The work of the artist should not alienate ‘Art’ from the “non-artists”. She feels the need to change the way art is traditionally perceived in our society. She fears that its quasi-ontological uselessness can be dangerous for the growth of society: art should not be isolated from life because the two are essentially the same. It shouldn’t be considered just for the aesthetic consumption of the elite. It should be seen for what it is – i.e. it is for everyone and everyone can be an artist .
'How to Draw'
"Everyone ought to be political!" she insists
The ancient Greeks spoke about “techne“ - they did not distinguish between art and technology. All forms of knowledge eventually converge or melt down into the cauldron of wisdom.
When asked about the “larger role “of an artist in the society, the artist suggested that artwork should be dialogic and self-explanatory; and it should be able to provide a critical discourse actively integrating into the lives of its audience - even sowing seeds of discomfort or doubt to help unshackle their observations of the world from the rigid orthodoxy of everyday cultural expectations. After all, art accepts the status quo as dysfunctional and in our society, people are so used to conformity that evils are not even considered evils anymore. Insensitivity can be infectious and it spreads like a disease.
She argues that the artist is a natural educator and a professional observer. Her vast experience in art education in Pakistan and outside Pakistan has further strengthened her belief that the artist has to be a reflective practitioner who imaginatively envisions how things are or might be and presents the lived and shared reality for analytical, critical and intellectual introspection. Only the artist has the power to change the fundamental outlook of a society and that artist could be anyone, for Jalil.
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In her work she represents the environment: situations, marks, mistakes, society and herself all woven together. She does not disconnect or remark from a distance. She embraces all elements of her surroundings and becomes a part of them through her peculiar childlike language. For Piaget, childhood was a pre-logical state, a state of subjectivity during which the child could not separate itself as a subject from the surroundings. Jalil, too, feels the childlike oneness and togetherness to the world which surrounds her.
Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh puts it in a beautiful way:
“To be is to be inter-be.”
One cannot just be oneself. One has to be inter-be with everything and everyone around. Rabeya Jalil would know!
